Monday, August 23, 2010

2 movies, 1 song

Following --directed by Christopher Nolan

The first film by Christopher Nolan, this has the out-of-sequence narrative style of "Momento", detailing, in a notably shattered way, the intensely strange relationship between a would-be writer, desperate for things to write about, and a professional burgler. While the viewer has a task assembling a linear storyline from the piecemeal details offered, the movie is compulsively watchable, and there is a sense of a the "normal" everyman being seduced by a bad influence and used as means to achieve dishonorable ends. Well done.

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Apocalypse Now Redux --directed by Francis Ford Coppola

This is one of the most problematic of American movies, a long, grandiose piece of pseudo-philosophy imposed on a concise, lyrically morality tale by Joseph Conrad Despite the flaws, the gaping gaps in narrative logic, this film displays much brilliance;while the film doesn't hang together as a coherent narrative, it does have more memorable, quotable set pieces than any film released in the last fifty years. The release of the "Redux" version got my attention because one of my college professors, Jean Pierre Gorin, worked on a particular section of the film, not used in the first release, concerning a French plantation who's owners considered their land French soil. As featured in "Redux" it was flat and talky, really nothing more than a long monologue on the history of Western interference in South Asian affairs, an erstwhile defense of Imperialism; the cast, eating dinner while the owner prates on, looks dumbfounded and without the slightest idea of what they're doing. Additional footage with the Playboy Bunnies offer up some callow laughs, but the gaiety , I think, is more from relief the added tedium ; I think Coppola and his editors came as close to the best version of the acknowledged mess they had to deal with as anyone has a right to expect.

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Dirty WorkSteely Dan

This is the song that says everything you wanted to say at the end of a relationship that ends poorly, what you would have said had you thought of it at the time.Nothing inspires like a love affair gone sour; Elvis Costello and Amiee Mann are examples of writers who do terrific work when an ex puts the hurt on them. It makes for more memorable tunes than what Joni Mitchell does, who's relationships, according to her career narrative, just kind of end for no reason just as her songs just seem to go on, with no justification.It's an experience everyone has, and it's a condition that transcends differences. When it comes to getting your heart broken, we all have a story to tell.

1 comment:

Apocalypse Now is so incredibly funny on an absolutely bleak level that all other flaws sink into the background. It lingers in the mind long after supposedly better-made films made. All these years later, Dennis Hopper is right: you can't land on fractions.